Re: Most Important Unsolved Problems?


"ErikW" <bryophyta@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dtkqam$2lt9$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
Regarding pedagogy, there are a few areas where the answers are
well known in certain circles, but the 'right thinking' has
not yet spread to all professionals, let alone the general
public.
- The idea that most of the 'work' done by NS goes toward
'maintenance of type' rather than toward 'progress'. I doubt
that this can be generally understood while the 'evolutionist'
establishment sees the battle with proponents of ID as more
important than anything else.

From where do you get the impression that it is not known? (I realize
that by "not all professionals" we may have different magnitudes and
different people in mind.) It would also interest me why you personally
think that NS maintain types rather than promote progress.

NS does both. But I think that most of what I have called the 'work' of
NS, if measured by counting selective deaths over time, goes to expunging
deleterious mutations from the wild type rather than expunging wild genes
to make way for advantageous mutations. But I don't have any empirical
data that supports this intuition. Another potentially large drain
on the 'selective death quota' is the maintenance of balanced polymorphisms,
which can also be interpreted as a kind of maintenance of type. And
in those rare cases (such as the thallasemias of West Africa) where
NS has to put a lot of its work into this area, I doubt that it has
a lot of 'energy' left over even for expunging mild deleteria.

As to whether it is widely known by 'professionals', again I am just
going by my impressions. But I will observe that in books written by
professionals for a popular audience, the point is rarely made and
almost never emphasized.

- The idea that most 'evolution' results from drift rather than
from NS.

Who doesn't know this? The general public, sure, but what professionals
do not?

I'm going to duck this question, other than noting that Joe Felsenstein
has suggested pretty broadly that molecular biologists as a class don't
seem to get it. Perhaps Joe or Larry can provide more details. One
piece of anecdotal evidence appears in the thread on spliceosomal introns.


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